What we are talking about is nothing less than a revolution in the way we communicate … The complexity of the task is so great that it is absolutely essential that government and industry work together.
Predictor: Landweber, Lawrence
Prediction, in context:In a 1993 New York Times article, technology reporter John Markoff wrote: ”The data superhighway will carry data on hair-thin glass fibers at thousands of times the speed of today’s digital systems and will link a computer user at home or work to a multitude of services that are either not available today or are time-consuming, difficult to use and expensive. As now envisioned, when the data superhighway is finished early in the next decade, students whose local library proved inadequate for research could tap into an enormous electronic library once available only to elite scholars. Someone with a personal compuer could ask a supercomputer far away to help solve a complex problem. Health care could become more efficient because computerized patient records, containing not just words but x-rays and other medical images, would be instantly available to any hospital or clinic; a faraway specialist, for example, could therefore make recommendations in a local case. Scientists, engineers or product developers far from each other could collaborate because their computer screens would become a sort of electronic blackboard for everyone to work on. A couch potato could summon any movie ever made by pushing a button. Working at home could become a snap because one’s personal computer could retrieve and manipulate information just as fast as the office work station; communicating with fellow workers would be far more natural because the network could handle videophone conversations. The data superhighway will also alter the way manufacturers work with customers and suppliers by allowing the huge volume of orders and records that now go back and forth on paper to be exchanged electronically. ‘What we are talking about is nothing less than a revolution in the way we communicate,’ said Lawrence H. Landweber, a University of Wisconsin computer scientist who has been a leader in developing an early version of the data superhighway. ‘The complexity of the task is so great that it is absolutely essential that government and industry work together.'”
Biography:Lawrence Landweber, then at the University of Wisconsin, created THEORYNET, providing electronic mail to a group of more than 100 computer-science researchers using a locally developed e-mail system over TELENET in 1977. In 1979 he worked with the National Science Foundation to establish a U.S. research computer network that eventually became NSFNET. (Pioneer/Originator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1993
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Role of Govt./Industry
Name of publication: New York Times
Title, headline, chapter name: Building the Electronic Superhighway
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=06df318c7c877e4f99b4d681fd5d7d8a&_docnum=11&wchp=dGLbVzb-lSlAl&_md5=fe0727c350edc2a7ea67660126e27835
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Pagano, Shawna